Solving Cluelessness

As a response to the Cluelessness critique competition and a working session at the Wellspring, by Euan McLean I collected my cluelessness mitigation strategies. I don’t think I’ll be eligible for the prize, but think my thoughts could help others to refine them to make them successful in the competition. Please let me know if they contributed to the success :)

Gradient of insight to impact

Certain effects → Uncertain effects → Deep uncertainty/cluelessness

Strategy to Resolve Cluelessness

Moving “uncertainty areas” to “certain / highly confident” through improved evidence, insights and robust strategies; then moving “deep uncertainty/clueless areas” towards “ordinary uncertainty” through high quality epistemic reasoning and conceptual progress.

Already existing insights on maximising effects over long periods of time

In order to approximate long-term sustainability, cultures need to be established that continuously learn, self-correct, and strive to maximise impact while maintaining stable values (reducing suffering of course :P). These cultures need to be self-reinforcing and replicating. Out of those cultures institutions and technologies need to be developed that continually improve their ability to reduce suffering. Respective systems/cultures also need to remain competitively advantageous to adversarial systems.

Increasing predictive capability (superdeterminism)

As data availability, scientific advances, simulation, and AI modelling improve, many currently uncertain consequences become increasingly predictable.

Potential bottleneck to reducing bad outcomes indefinitely:
Long-term robustness may not exist in highly complex, dynamic systems. Achieving robustness may require limiting complexity or dynamism, potentially at the cost of foregone opportunities. While in limited time-lines interventions are considered favourable that are both persisting and reversible (cf. the Wild Animal Initiative’s persistence–reversibility framework), over sufficiently long time horizons, persistence and reversibility may become fundamentally incompatible.

Hope that helps. Curious about peoples thoughts.